The Company

With 333 employees across two locations, Citation offer professional solutions in the legal services industry and help over 15,000 businesses with the essential support they need to grow and develop. Their workforce has an average age of 42 with an online to offline ratio of 62:38.

The Challenge

Best Evolution of Company Benefits

Citation’s leadership team recognised they needed to pay attention to the factors that drive profitability in the service chain; investment in people, technology that supports all colleagues, revamped recruiting and training practices, as well as compensation and benefits that linked to performance for employees at entry level.

Reward loyalty is hugely important to Citation and so retaining successful, ambitious, hardworking colleagues is key to achieving business objectives and attracting the best people to work with them. To do this, Citation knew that changing to a client centric organisation would take time, effort and resilience. It’s about focusing on the mindset, behaviours and practices that create better internal relationships, whilst still rewarding their colleagues for the work they do.

Most Effective Relaunch Campaign

Citation had a key strategic objective to put service rather than sales at the heart of everything they do. Their aim is for clients to be advocates and use those recommendations as a the key inbound sales channel. Citation recognised that one of the most powerful factors in spurring customers to promote the company is a positive behaviour and attitude from their employees.

Their belief that people will support what they help to build meant it was fundamental that Citation involved all of their colleagues in every aspect of the business. They realised their approach must follow the service profit chain and start with an inside out customer service. That means treating colleagues like customers because happy colleagues create happy clients.

Citation conducted research with Reward Gateway about their plans and exploring additional benefits. This led to in-depth colleague feedback about what they would value most if Citation were to consider introducing any additional benefits.

Media from awards night

Watch Citation’s winners’ interview at the Engagement Excellence Awards 2015

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Citation at the Engagement Excellence Awards 2015

The Solution

Best Evolution of Company Benefits

Citation began a five-day story campaign to relaunch their Discounts and Various Exclusives platform, affectionately known to everyone at Citation as DAVE. They sent out one image a day to tease the relaunch and ended it with the big introduction of Miss Benefit – DAVE’s new girlfriend.

The following Monday, every colleague received a gift box containing a Miss Benefit Book which launched the new benefits, an invitation to the We Love Clients conference, a service book called Raving Fans which everyone was given the afternoon off to read, and chocolate. Ahead of the conference, colleagues voted for who should receive an annual award and why. It included the categories Colleague of the Year, Service Star and Above & Beyond, in which every single colleague nominated someone.

Citation’s conference centred around service and set out their future vision and direction, they even invited the Customer Service Director from John Lewis in as a speaker. The Year of Service to encourage colleague engagement was launched and a life-sized cutout of DAVE and Miss Benefit were welcomed to the stage. To cap it all off, Citation’s workforce was split up into groups and challenged to implement 15 new actions around customer service within three months. The best idea would win a £10,000 prize.

With the evolution of their company benefits being so successful, DAVE and Miss Benefit is used on all job adverts to attract candidates who have the same cultural mindset. Citation now fills over 90% of job vacancies  through direct application – opposed to 50% filled through agency just 12 months before. Employee turnover has also reduced by 33%, and the amount of applications received has risen 300% since the previous years. More and more employees are also referring Citation to their friends and family as a great place to work, with 10 new starters to date as a result of a referral.

25% of colleagues have taken advantage of the first Holiday Trading window and they’ve had a further 30 applications for the latest window to open. In a recent poll, 14% of Citation employees said they were interested in a Cycle to Work scheme, which has now been opened.

Citation enjoyed further success by winning the award for ‘Best Evolution of Company Benefits’ at the Engagement Excellence Awards 2015.

Most Effective Relaunch Campaign

It was decided that to really bring the service profit chain to life then Citation would need a cultural revolution in their company, and so they planned a We Love Clients conference to become their annual employee award ceremony.

Citation then began a five-day story campaign to relaunch their Discounts and Various Exclusives platform, affectionately known to everyone at Citation as DAVE. They sent out one image a day to tease the relaunch and ended it with the big introduction of Miss Benefit – DAVE’s new girlfriend.

The following Monday, every colleague received a gift box containing a Miss Benefit Book which launched the new benefits, an invitation to the We Love Clients conference, a service book called Raving Fans which everyone was given the afternoon off to read, and chocolate. Ahead of the conference, colleagues voted for who should receive an annual award and why. It included the categories Colleague of the Year, Service Star and Above & Beyond, in which every single colleague nominated someone.

Citation’s conference centred around service and set out their future vision and direction, they even invited the Customer Service Director from John Lewis in as a speaker. The Year of Service to encourage colleague engagement was launched and a life-sized cutout of DAVE and Miss Benefit were welcomed to the stage. To cap it all off, Citation’s workforce split up into groups and challenged to implement 15 new actions around customer service within three months. The best idea would win a £10,000 prize.

The We Love Clients conference was a huge success, largely because all of Citation’s colleagues had nominated someone and there was genuine support for every winner. Citation also met their target of implementing 15 customer service actions within three months.

Their NPS score is the real indicator on the success of the whole relaunch as it increased 100% in nine months. Citation also entered the 2014 Sunday Times Top 100 companies to Work For and achieved a response rate of 94%. Hugely impressive when the average is just 65% – every colleague now wanted to be a Raving Fan of Citation and that put the company in the ‘Extraordinary’ classification in the Top 100 list.

25% of colleagues have taken advantage of Holiday Trading, and another 14% have shown interest in the upcoming Cycle to Work scheme. The relaunch campaign and new direction of treating colleagues like clients is a proven success as Citation have beaten their monthly sales targets every month this year – and their employee turnover has reduced by 33%.

Citation scooped the award for ‘Most Effective Relaunch Campaign’ at the Engagement Excellence Awards 2015.